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Serious accident at the glacial lagoon... just a matter of time !

Readers Corner

Serious accident at the glacial lagoon... just a matter of time !

Hi there! We are a couple from Germany; we've been to Iceland twice - last time in September of 2015 - and already dream about coming back.

We really love the country and look at the MILA webcams ("livefromiceland") several times every day - even though many cams notoriously don't work, which I think is a real shame for one of the global main tourist destinations – but that's a different subject. No good advertising for a hi-tech nation.

Why I do write today? Almost EVERY single day during the last weeks on the webcam, I see tourists step out on the ice floes on the glacial lagoon (see attached snapshot).Sometimes they are 50-100 m away from the shore, taking children with them, running around and even jumping up and down (!), obviously to find out whether the ice is solid enough. And, of course, as soon as some idiots do it, others follow. It's a true miracle nothing has happened yet, and it makes me wonder why nobody seems to care?I understand there are many foreigners who have never ever seen ice and have no idea of the danger, so they must be protected from their own ignorance.

So, most of all I wonder: Why is there no permanent ranger on site? Or at least safety barriers/fences and huge warning signs? An alert system? Sooner or later there'll be a horrible accident, which will bring negative headlines all around the world about the indifference of authorities towards security issues. Taking the tourists' money seems to be all right, but preventing lethal accidents seems not worth to invest in. Have Dyrhólaey and Reynisfjara not been warnings enough lately?